


making moves on bad decisions

by mavnificent



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dumb conversation between dumb friends, Gen, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Sex Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15926066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mavnificent/pseuds/mavnificent
Summary: How do you say 'I bet she has a strap' in Zemnian?





	making moves on bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in years, so of course when I want to play around with dialogue and ensemble casts by dipping my toes into Widomauk, I write a conversation about pegging. Of course.

Molly watches Caleb when they’re in the tavern, stomachs full of ale and heavy with food. They’re close to the hearth, heat billowing over the Nein and chasing away the nip of cold lingering outside their radius of warmth. Molly doesn’t mind the heat, sits closest to it with the flame at his back. He enjoys the way it casts light across Caleb’s smudged face, the way he’s leant forward against the edge of the table, arguing quietly, intensely with Beau, whose voice is a raucous scrape. Molly knows his angles, knows that his back to the fire means he’s cast in blocks of dark, so a little staring won’t get him noticed.

Shadows catch the creases beneath Caleb’s eyes, orange so harsh on the blue of his gaze that they’re reduced to a couple of colorless marbles. His auburn hair is a halo of beaten copper.

Molly should’ve been a bloody bard.

“—That is a stupid idea, Beauregard,” their wizard is saying. “The stupidest.”

“I don’t hear anyone coming up with something better,” Beau fires back.

Fjord’s voice is a pleasant rumble beside him, a school marm breaking up a fight between siblings. “Now, we don’t have to figure out anything tonight. This afternoon was—”

“A bust?” Nott supplies.

“Yeah. That.”

“Awful,” Jester provides.

Fjord nods along. Caleb makes a noise of assent, Molly’s hum riding its coattails. 

“Just the _worst,_ ” Jester continues emphatically, like they aren’t listening. “You guys, it was _really_ bad. I’m out of spells. But!” Her hands clap together, smile returning more powerful than one hundred Dancing Lights, and she directs all that radiance at the woman next to her. “At least Yasha is back!”

Jester’s arms open wide, then snap shut around Yasha like gator jaws, and she locks up with a grimace Molly suspects is an attempt at a smile. Their eyes meet across the table, flick away to seek out Caleb.

It’s a pleasant evening, mission hiccup or not. He hadn’t taken any damage he didn’t inflict on himself, _and_ he’d gotten extra time in the wash closet. They’d all made asses of themselves, sure, Beau and Caleb maybe worst of all, but that was a given these days. All in all, decent in spite of the tiff at the table.

Molly turns so far to face his teammates, his whole bicep pillowed against the tabletop, the curve of his jaw caught in a cradled palm. If he lifted his leg he could drape it across Fjord’s lap, over Beau’s. He doesn’t think Fjord would mind, he’s used to his bullshit by now, but Beau—his tail sways, content, gaze shifting back to Caleb. Nott’s little clawed hand is tipping stripped chicken bones onto his plate, and Caleb watches her, his lips pressed into a pale line, scruffy chin squared and jutted. Petulant again.

“Ja, perhaps we can, you know,” Caleb gestures with a bandaged hand, a circle that is utterly meaningless as he fishes for words. “Perhaps hide behind Yasha when we return. Even that is a better plan than what Beauregard has suggested.”

“Oh, fuck you, Caleb,” Beau gripes. There’s no heat in her voice.

“I mean, you could, perhaps. Hide behind me, I mean,” Yasha begins softly, carefully pulling Jester’s arms from around her like she’s plucking lint from her leathers. She’s gentle as she sets Jester’s hands back into her own lap.

“She _is_ big,” Nott warbles, mouth full. Firelight catches the grease smeared across her green lips, shines them white. “We could all hide behind you.” 

Yasha nods. “You could.”

Caleb leans in to look at Yasha on Jester’s other side. “No, that—it was a joke. To illustrate how stupid Beau’s plan is.”

“I think we’re all too tired to be making any brilliant decisions tonight,” Molly offers peaceably as Beau revs up for another volley. He’s not trying to protect anyone, and Caleb barely spares him a glance anyway.

“Molly’s right,” Fjord sits up. “Let’s relax. We’re not making any moves. Except to the bar—y’all want another round?”

“I stand corrected,” Molly says. “ _That_ is a brilliant idea.”

They’re all tired and grumpy, some grimier than others, but Molly hasn’t felt this warm, this sated since the Pillow Trove, and he hasn’t even paid for extra hands. This kind of safety makes him want to do something goofy. Get up and round the table and crawl across Yasha and Jester’s laps until he’s laying over Caleb’s. In a perfect world, Caleb wouldn’t even start. He’d bury his fingers in his hair like he does in Frumpkin’s fur, right behind his ear, and pick up his argument with Beau anew. Jester could stroke his sides.

It’s a nice daydream. Reality would be much harsher, of course, but he’s certain that even if Caleb froze up like a pygmy goat, or fell off the bench, or kneed him in the face, intentionally or unintentionally, Jester would still pet Molly’s sides.

A foot slides against the blade of his own. His blink is languid, eyes tracking to the right, smoldering under the firelight. Yasha is watching him, eyebrows a subtle lift, like maybe she senses that circus level of comfort he’s feeling, that ache for affection. His smile is as sharp as it is hopelessly helpless.

 _Pretty,_ he mouths, fingers extending straight beneath his jaw and wiggling.   

 _Careful,_ Yasha mouths back, and he’s watched her long enough to see the shadow of a curve at the edges of her lips. If she snorts it’s softer than the crackle of the fire and buried in the dregs of her drink. Molly lifts his foot and rests it over the top of hers. She allows it.

“Alright, I’ll be back.” Fjord excuses himself with a grunt. The spot he leaves is a cavern of empty warmth. “Seven ales, coming right up.”

“Six,” Jester corrects. Her tail flops into a playful curve. “And one milk.”

“And one milk,” Fjord parrots, corner of his mouth pulling.

“ _Thank_ you, Fjord!”

Fjord waves an errant hand and cuts across the tavern floor, and Molly watches Caleb track him for a beat before turning back to the others.

“Actually, he’s wrong,” Molly very lazily sing-songs. “ _I’m_ going to make a move.”

Molly finally sits up and stretches his arms out, rolls his shoulders, his neck. The skin around Yasha’s eyes tightens and he’s quick to shake his head, just once with a tinkle of jewelry. Of course it’s when he’s about to peel off that Caleb finally turns his way, and only in his peripheral.

“Are you going to bed, Molly? _Already?_ ” Jester sounds disappointed.

He leans in, eyes bright and conspiratorial. Jester tips forward, rapt, the way she does whenever he spreads his tarot out for her.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “But not alone if I play my cards right.” There's a sound of someone shifting off to the side. Something tilts sideways in his gut, but he ploughs on, “There is a _lovely_ dwarf woman in the corner whose story I must know.”

Yasha huffs. He turns an exaggerated frown on her.

“Hey, you were off...Yasha-ing,” he protests with another finger waggle. “I’m very happy you’re back, by the way.”

“Yes. But now you want to go off. Molly...ing.” Yasha’s delivery is a little stilted, like she’s tasting the words before she speaks them into existence. It’s cute. Beau twists in her seat, gaze sweeping the nearly empty tavern. She pauses, eyes narrowing through the dim towards the bar, where a squat, thick-armed, auburn-haired vision sits, nursing a tumbler with liquid the same color as her beard.

“Molly. Man. I bet she has a strap. She looks like a woman with a strap.” Approving, wondrous, the _only_ time she’d ever agree with him on anything. Molly swoops towards his monk friend, fingers spreading wide over the bench as his shoulder hikes up. He hadn’t even considered it.

“I _so_ hope she is,” he drawls.

Jester giggles. Caleb is puzzled.

“Strap?” And really, it’s not a word Molly ever thought he’d hear Caleb utter.

“Yeah,” Beau says. She makes a vague hand motion like she’s linking a sausage. It’s almost as meaningless as Caleb’s earlier gesture. “ _You know_.”

Caleb’s brows twitch together. He cannot possibly be this dense. His smutty books have dicks, loads of them, they’ve established this already.

“This is very regular dinner conversation,” Nott observes. Caleb looks down at her.

“You know what this strap means?”

“Mmm.” She draws, long and deep, from her flask.

Jester’s hands flutter. “Hang on, hang on! I’ll _show_ you!” she chirps delightedly, and for one, startlingly exciting moment, Molly thinks she’s going to whip a dick out of the Haversack. Instead, she fishes out her sketchbook.

“I mean, we can just explain it to him,” Beau starts, shifting in her seat. She tucks her foot under her thigh on the bench, leans forward. “Right? He probably knows what it is in Zemnian. Like a language thing? Caleb, it’s—”

“No!” Jester frowns Beau’s way, piece of charcoal slashing through the air like a wand. “Let me show Caleb!”

“Show Caleb what?” Fjord asks, hands laden with steins. The barkeep bustles in behind him, settling flagons down and smiling at the lot of them as she departs with a hiss-swish of skirts. No one says a word until she’s out of earshot and Fjord has taken his place beside Molly again. They’re at least decent enough to wait until he’s fully seated.

“We’re teaching him what a strap is,” Molly informs pleasantly, too happy to catch him up. “Or rather, Jester is.”

“Like a, uh, belt? _”_

“No, no, _no!_ You _know_ ,” Jester’s tongue pokes from the corner of her mouth. She’s making _long_ arcing motions with that charcoal stick. “Like _pegging._ ”

“Are you going to let this happen to me?” Caleb mutters Nott’s way when Fjord whites out with an ' _uhhh' ._  He tilts back, trying to catch a glimpse of Jester’s sketch, but she ducks away from him.  

“I kind of want to see where it goes,” Nott admits. “Sorry, Caleb.”

“This is...a sex thing.” He’s resigned to his fate.

Molly tries his very best not to give in to any fancies. He glances at Yasha, who watches over Jester’s shoulder with a mild interest present in her expression until she feels the burn of his gaze. He catches her eye and tilts his head, questioningly.

_Want in?_

She shakes her head once. _All yours._

“Okay! Okay, okay,” Jester announces with one final, artistic flourish. Caleb has his mug to his lips when she flips her sketchbook over, the apples of her freckled cheeks so round and scrunched that her eyes have become crescent moons. The head of foam in Caleb’s flagon goes spraying over the sides with his splutter.

Molly grins.

Fjord groans beside him. “Why are y’all even _talkin’_ about this?”

Nott’s eyes are lamplights at Caleb’s elbow, “You think it’s that big, Jester?”

Jester’s shoulders bob up. “It _could_ be!”

Caleb uses his scarf to wipe down his mouth, his scruff. His cheeks are red, but that could be from his little coughing fit. It’s charming either way.

“Ja. Ja, okay, I know what that is,” he clears his throat. Nott pats at his forearm. His gaze twitches to Molly, then scrabbles away again he catches him staring. There’s a pleasant zing from sternum to belly, and the impulse to press about _how much_ Caleb knows is overwhelming. Molly swallows it down with a pull of ale.

Jester flips the sketchbook around and presents it to the rest of the Nein. “Ta-da!”

Beau grips her jaw, face scrunching as she examines the sketch and Fjord elects to stare at the tabletop. This dick—it’s wonderfully cartoonish in size.

“That harness is masterful, Jester, my dear,” Molly breezes. Caleb makes a little aborted sound, so sweet that Molly’s tail swoops until it’s mirroring Jester’s earlier air-flop. “It’s high art.”

“I know, right?” She beams. She turns her notebook back around to admire her handiwork. “Fjord, are you alright?”

“Yup. Yup, sure am,” he says, sounding like he sure ain’t. “You really know your...dicks.”

“I _do!_ ”

Molly drains his flagon and sets it on the tabletop. “I will see you all in the morning,” he declares. “Duty calls.”

Caleb clears his throat. He’s staring at the wood grain beneath his hands, then cautions a glance Molly’s way, expression inscrutable. “Well. Good—good luck, Mollymauk.”

Jester thrusts her glass of milk into the air to toast.

Molly stares at Caleb a beat. He could invite him, too—feels torn between imagining his refusal, which is, initially, a stumbling one, but no, no, that’s not right, is it? His rebuff would be dry and flat, painfully funny, if not disappointing.

Then he imagines it _,_ him and Caleb and the dwarf woman, but he can’t remember her face even though she’s right at the bar, and that’s—that’s exactly how it’d be. He knows his heart as best he can given it’s only been a couple of years since it started beating, and he knows he’d pour his attention into Caleb, that he wouldn’t give their third the time of day, and that—

That just isn’t good form, is it?

There’s not much inside of Molly, but he’d fill it up with Caleb if he could. He can’t, and waiting has never done him much anyway.

“If it’s as big as Jester’s drawing he’ll need all the luck he can get,” Nott says off-hand. Caleb’s jaw squares, the spell breaks, and Beau snorts, taps her flagon to Jester’s waiting glass. Molly raps his sharp claws on the table, once, twice, to drag himself out of his reverie. 

“Thank you very much, Mister Caleb. Everyone—goodnight!” He steps over the bench, giving Fjord’s shoulder a flapping pat as he goes. 

“Didn’t Molly use the dodeca-beacon-thingy today?” Nott asks. Fjord groans, and the goblin leans over to dump some of the contents of her flask into his stein.

Yasha takes sympathy. “You can room with me, Fjord. If you’d like.” 

“Yeah,” he sighs, grinding his knuckles in between his eyes when a performer’s laugh wafts in from the bar. “Thanks, Yasha. I’d like very much.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @zoddamnit if you want to stop by and ask me why.


End file.
